At 70, Blass had collected a lot of memories and he decided to put them down on paper. The resulting book was “A Pirate for Life.” He talked to NewsRadio 1020 KDKA’s Mike Romigh about the book that is now available in paperback.

Blass talked about his playing days and the culture of sports today. Blass says his book talks about the good times and the bad times. He got to live his dream winning a World Series but also talked about the hardest part of his career, losing his touch and realizing he had to retire.

Blass stayed with the Pirates his entire career and has been with the organization for 54 years.

He says that it’s unique for a player to stay with an organization for that long. It’s something he is proud of. He admits though he would test the market if sports were the way they are today because the number of years you can play is short.

Blass says the game hasn’t changed but the culture has. He also says Pittsburgh is a great baseball town and it’s nice to see kids wearing Pirates jerseys again and people getting excited about Pirate baseball.

One of the stories Blass told Romigh was when he talked to Roberto Clemente about how he would pitch to him. He told Clemente he would pitch him inside because everyone else pitched him outside and he hit .320. Clemente told him “if you pitch inside to me, I’ll hit the ball to Harrisburg.”